Masters Degrees for Tribal Churches?

I posted this reply about Master of Divinity Degrees on the thread. I think it's worth its own post as I can see merits to both sides of the argument.

Should All Educated Westerners be Teaching Elders in a Missionary Church?

Please help me understand a Presbyterian approach to this scenario, which I have seen in real life.
You send a missionary to a jungle tribe. The Spirit works in that tribe and a church forms. After a couple of years, there are men in the tribe that have matured and meet the biblical qualifications for eldership.

Do you all think that only educated Westerners should be teaching elders in that church until the tribe can send their qualified men out of the country to go to seminary, or a highly educated missionary can come and give them an MDiv equivalent in the jungle?

I have seen the scenario happen in real life, but the missionary was a Baptist.  So his focus on developing elders was gospel basics and spiritual maturity.  It took him 20+ years until he could leave the tribe. None of the elders shepherding that tribal church now, 30 years in, have an education that even approaches a western M. Div. What's the presbyterian answer?  This is not a gotcha.  I'm curious how you resolve this.

My Response

I've got a quick, lame, maybe cop-out answer. Imagine planting churches and elders were raised up within a few MONTHS. That's at least what the accounts of Acts suggest with the early trips of Paul.

Did any of those elders get an MDIV? No. Did at least a few folks who stayed and were commissioned to appoint elders to receive personal discipleship and training from apostles? Yes - see Timothy and potentially Titus as examples.

30 years down the road the goal was for continual maturing in the faith while remaining true to the apostolic teaching of Christ. That's the goal. Does theological training and education sometimes help with this? Yes. Does seminary help weed out men who thought they were called but are not? Yes. Training and discipleship are both requirements in the life of the believer, whether the person is called to the offices of ordained ministry in the church or not. Whether that training and discipleship has to take a decisively Western reformation flavor, that of course is not paramount or always synonymous with the biblical example.

It's OK for us to recognize that an individual church can say "We want to call someone with an MDIV" and differentiate this preference of a particular local church, or even a particular region, or whole denomination. It is perfectly honoring to Christ, while also not fully representative of all the various means and manners that God chooses to work. The kingdom is not restricted to Western educational preferences or ecosystems. The Holy Spirit is much more ambitious than just working in the confines of Western academic theological training centers.

Hope some of those thoughts help.